This study will attempt to assess the consequences of the community decentralization plan which just went into effect in New York City. Decentralization was designed to bring government and citizen closer together in the planning process, reduce citizen alienation and improve the delivery of urban services. Urban services are defined here as a resource. Using the principle that competition over resources in one of the stimuli for group formation, it is proposed that decentralization will influence the formation of local groups along class, racial, ethnic and occupational lines, in their efforts to influence the distribution of urban services. As the District Board hearings will deal with specific plans that may be perceived as influencing the distribution of services, these hearings will the primary setting for data collection. On these grounds it is predicted that there will be an intensification of intergroup conflict at the local level, and the development at the local level of the same patterns of alienation that now exists between the community people and the city.